Understanding Minimalist art

April 18, 2008|By Alan G. Artner, TRIBUNE CRITIC

Whenever I attend museum exhibitions in the company of others, inevitably I overhear comments from people frustrated by the work they are there to see. So by now I thought I instantly could point to the area of creation that gives an audience the most trouble. But to be certain, I asked at the Museum of Contemporary Art, and was taken aback to learn from comments heard by its education staff and docents that a style more than 40 years old continues to cause greater difficulty than most currents today.

The surprise -- and its stumbling blocks: It's known as Minimalism, or Minimal art, and it gained the most attention in the 1960s, though its roots stretch far back in the century. It encompassed both abstract painting and sculpture, but as time went on the term got applied to sculpture more exclusively. Those most closely associated with it defined it too complexly to be helpful here. As befitting an art that grew out of universities, explications were cerebral, history-conscious and primarily directed at other art professionals. The simplest description would cite its severity, geometry, impersonality and industrial materials -- all of which have proved stumbling blocks for a general audience.

Reduced -- not vacant: An explanation that accompanied a very early use of the term -- in 1929! -- may help us today. "Minimalism derives its name from the minimum of operating means," the writer asserted, and that minimum represents a choice as valid for artmaking as any other. Modern architecture taught us to see how less can be more. It's the same with Minimalism. A small number of "operating means" is not vacancy.

What it's not -- and what it is: Abstract Expressionism, a style of painting and sculpture before Minimal art, formed a record of the artists' emotions. Pop Art, a style in the same period as Minimalism, treated the world outside the artist, sometimes with irony and humor. Minimal art rejected all of that in favor of foregrounding the particulars -- shape, color, proportion and so on -- of itself. A famous saying (about the ancient Greek father of geometry) is "Euclid alone has looked on beauty bare." The impersonal severity of geometry conveyed through machine-made materials is the bare beauty of Minimal art.

Our limitation -- not the works': Casual viewers balk at art that expresses nothing but itself. But all honest art is first about itself. What it may tell us about the world comes after considerations of shape, color, proportion and so on. And such considerations make the art. If we're focused only on an artwork's effect on us, we may find what makes a piece boring. But that is our limitation, not the works', which may be extraordinary in thought and how they're put together, apart from their immediate effect on viewers. So it is within the compass of Minimal art.

A final hurdle: The fact that Minimal works usually were executed by someone other than the artist presents a final hurdle. Audiences like to think art has to be created directly by the artist's hand. Why? Old Masters often had assistants give form to their ideas. So an exercise of craft is only a partial measure of artistry. We may prefer artists do everything by themselves and admire most those who hold to that as a point of honor. But, as was true with Minimalism, the level of an artist's demand may also be high when labor is performed by someone else.

Development: Minimal art did not just fade away. Most of its artists continued working -- some working themselves out of it. The pioneer most favored in Chicago, a city less taken by Minimalism than others in the world, was Sol LeWitt, who has pieces in many local collections, including the Museum of Contemporary Art and the Art Institute of Chicago. The development of his work is the most captivating instance of how aspects of Minimalism continued to influence art long after the original strictness faded.

ART INSTITUTE OF CHICAGO

Minimal works by Carl Andre, Brice Marden and John McCracken are on view in Gallery 136 through April 30.

111 S. Michigan Ave.

312-443-3600

'LINES IN FOUR DIRECTIONS'

Sol LeWitt's 1985 public sculpture

18 W. Jackson Blvd. (on side, rear wall)

MUSEUM OF CONTEMPORARY ART

No Minimal art currently on display. An untitled wall piece by Donald Judd will be on view beginning June 28.